em tame
beside her; and in the course of time the young men found themselves
regarding their ward not so much like brothers as at first. They
struggled with their destiny manfully, for the holy orders which they
were about to assume precluded the idea of love.

But every day taught them to be more fond of her. So they drifted on.
The weak like to temporize.

One night Emile Jardin and Anglice were not to be found. They had
flown,--but whither nobody knew, and nobody, save Antoine, cared.

It was a heavy blow to Antoine,--for he had half made up his mind to run
away with her himself.

A strip of paper slipped from a volume on Antoine's desk, and fluttered
to his feet.

"_Do not be angry_" said the bit of paper, piteously; "_forgive us, for
we love_."

Three years went by. Antoine had entered the Church, and was already
looked upon as a rising man; but his face was pale and his heart leaden,
for there was no sweetness in life for him.

Four years had elapsed, when a letter, covered with outlandish stamps,
was brought to the young priest,--a letter from Anglice. She was dying;
would he forgive her? Emile, the year previous, had fallen a victim to
the fever that raged on the island; and their child, little Anglice, was
likely to follow him. In pitiful terms she begged Antoine to take charge
of the child until she was old enough to enter a convent. The epistle
was finished by another hand, informing Antoine of Madame Jardin's
death; it also told him that Anglice had been placed on a vessel shortly
to leave the island for some Western port.

The letter was hardly read and wept over, when little Anglice arrived.
On beholding her, Antoine uttered a cry of joy and surprise,--she was so
like the woman he had worshipped.

As a man's tears are more pathetic than a woman's, so is his love more
intense,--not more enduring, or half so subtile, but intenser.

The passion that had been crowded down in his heart broke out and
lavished its richness on this child, who was to him, not only the
Anglice of years ago, but his friend Emile Jardin also.

Anglice possessed the wild, strange beauty of her mother,--the bending,
willowy form, the rich tint of skin, the large tropical eyes, that had
almost made Antoine's sacred robes a mockery to him.

For a month or two Anglice was wildly unhappy in her new home. She
talked continually of the bright country where she was born, the fruits
and flowers and blue skies. Antoine could not p